How does it feel…if you were on the show, part naked, part blurting out truths about your life, part yourself or part whatever… Exciting? Or is that a “Ew…EW…EW” from you?

What if I tell you that you could be part of so many reality shows? – But without your knowledge?

Did you know that your Smart TV, Smart Phone and Smart everything in your house could actually be the spy-in-the-pie, that you were so very happy to be with. Did you know that you could actually be welcoming trouble by spending so much on all these Smart devices?

What if you know that your swanky Smart TV could actually be beaming your voice (and images) to some company’s servers, which needless to say, can be sold out to unscrupulous elements for a price, or can be tapped in between making you and your life a saleable commodity?

Do we have any rights to protect our privacy and dignity? Its scary! But true.

Well, I’ve been sharing “my findings” with a few of my friends, for the past few years, and invariably the response has been – “You are being paranoid!” – How easy it is for someone to dismiss legitimate understandings (not fears), just because they can’t think on those lines…or probably they already know and were keeping it under wraps for whatever reasons. Well, lets dismiss it. They are not the point of interest here.

The point is, we are being watched! The “evidence” comes from trolling a discussion with none other than @Snowden, and so here it goes….

My interest piques me to follow Parker Higgins @xor and this is what he had to share:

And then I search further to check if LG has had a similar declaration – Because that’s the smart TV I have at home. 😦 And look at what they have to say:

Do run through the link without fail. Don’t miss out on the comments to his blog post. – They are much more revealing and intriguing.

And these were being discussed way back in 2013. The world has changed a lot more for us, in the past 3 years. I am not sure if these were looked into by the Indian Government when they allowed entry to Korean giants to enter our markets with great vigour, 3 years back.

Right from Google searches (you only get search terms, per the Google algorithm that decides what you must be looking for; no marks for being off-beat, away from the long-tread path or just being out-of-the-box in your search. By now, Google has a repository of information on what you eat, wear, drink, buy and it programs even your thoughts by suggesting to you, every time you go on a search. Its good for first time senior citizens who are experiencing the ‘Google world’ of UX. But do others need it? Aren’t we capable of searching for what we want?) and PPC Ads, Smart Phones auditioning your life to some character sitting at the telecom service provider office, to Smart TVs making you a Star…life can’t get more complicated, with these devices promising you otherwise.

The morality and ethics apart, any guesses on who needs to capture this data about you? Who’s your Big Boss? – Is it the State or some enterprise or political party that wants their Big Data Analytics to be more meaningful?

Does that leave us with any rights to protect our privacy and dignity?

And a 5-judge Constitution Bench is taking a call on Section 377, a draconian British law against the LGBT community that is still in force, “that amounts to denial of rights to privacy and dignity, resulting in gross miscarriage of justice” !

As if the rest of us have it. I just can’t help laughing at the irony of it all.